Rosie the Rooster

Despite our best efforts of buying sexed hens both Isabella and I had a rooster amongst our flocks. 

Rosemary, dubbed Rosie by my daughter, aka "hawkey" (while in the brooder Isabella referred to her as hawkey --she always had a slightly wild look in her eye) turned out to be a rooster. The crowing was NON-STOP and it wasn't limited to morning. Rosie crowed at 4am, 6am, mid-morning, all-afternoon. It was loud and it was all the time. I now understand why towns have ordinances against roosters. 

Rosie the rooster at 3 months

 

After several weeks of crowing, we eventually found Rosie a new home in NH. Thanks to the egg supplier at the Hancock Farmer's Market Rosie is now in a flock of 200+ birds. While we miss what was the prettiest bird in our flock, we definitely don't miss the crowing. 

Roosters

The art of sexing chickens is apparently only 90% accurate. Lisanne and I have both discovered this and each have a rooster from our original 17 chicks. Unfortunately Lisanne's is a beautiful bird (she'll post photos). Mine is one of the Crested Polish and because he is a) a rooster b) noisy and c) mounting the hens, the ladies have pecked most of the feathers out of his crest.

But he is persistent, and hard to catch, so I have dubbed him Wiley Coyote. He starts crowing at about 5 every morning, which I am sure endears us to our neighbors (even though we live in farm country). He crows about 10 times, then stops for a few minutes and begins again.

Every morning Tim growls, "When are you getting rid of that rooster???"

Initially he was supposed to go to Drumlin Farm to replace their more docile Crested Polish rooster. But they can't take him until the end of the summer. So it's either get rid of Wiley or get a divorce.



You can see what I chose. But I made Tim chase him down.



Here is Wiley in the back of my car, headed to his new "home." Incidentally he wasn't fat enough to eat (even though Lisanne's mother and my father swore they would slaughter the roosters), so he was dropped off with a poultry breeder who takes roosters. Don't ask what happens next...